From My Poetry Room

In a hollow cavity at the back of my mind

there is a hidden room 

where I go when I need to write a poem

I simply close my eyes, grit my teeth, and pass through the portal 

shutting the sturdy door firmly behind me

A room that smells of lilacs and peppermint schnapps

decorated in pastel stripes

Fuscia, lavender, eggplant, plum

Thelonious Monk might be playing Misterioso in the background

Or Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain 

A large bay window on the North wall

displays a series of inspiring scenes

The Menominee River, Ludlow Avenue at dusk 

children at play in the forest

the beach at Siesta Key 

wretched souls in the fifth circle of Hell 

Life-sized portraits on the East wall stare back at me

Dorothy Parker, Ferlinghetti, Hilaire Belloc 

Charles Bukowski, Spike Milligan, Langston Hughes 

A digital message board is mounted on the South wall 

depicting an endless array of poetry prompts

Neurotic anxieties, Valentine wishes, what dogs get confused about

horrid parents, the lucky number 3, cryptids, arthritic joints

On the West wall placards list instructions for poetic forms

Villanelle, Kyriele, Shadorma

Triolet, Ghazal, Rondeau, Oviellejo   

Two armchairs await in the corner

One, plush and over-stuffed, prompts a gentle flow of poetic imagery

The other vibrates madly and shakes loose long buried ideas

For sustenance, the mini-refrigerator offers

Lorna Doone cookies and Canadian whiskey  

On the counter, half a dozen corked vials

contain smelling salts that induce emotions of choice

Joy, torment, grief, longing, mild amusement, confusion 

There at my desk a yellow legal pad, a laptop computer, a #2 pencil 

a thesaurus, a rhyming dictionary, a copy of Bartlett’s Quotations  

I am actually sitting in my poetry room at this very moment

writing this poem for you

I had planned to take a lunch break but

the door is locked, I’ve lost the key

I do have all the necessities

I will just stay here locked in my room 

until the end of my days 

Brouhaha at the Symphony: A Kyrielle

The girl was filming with her phone

The policy — no videos — was well-known

Past concerts, no one ever dared 

The soloist stopped playing and glared 

The soloist demanded she refrain

The girl replied, “That’s insane” 

She continued to film unimpaired

The soloist stopped playing and glared

The president of the symphony came down 

He confronted the culprit with a frown  

But the headstrong girl wasn’t scared 

The soloist stopped playing and glared

The president escorted her out

The girl said he was a lout 

Mouths agape, the audience stared  

The soloist stopped playing and glared     

Beasts of the Night

The close of dusk, I lit my fire

Moonless and darkening

though the crown of evergreen branches

spread its design across the gray-blue sky

Burning pine logs crackled and spit

shooting out sparks which spun to the grass

then flickered and disappeared

By nine o’clock the world had turned pitch black

I called my wife on my cell phone

and told her it was eery, even scary

The park was deserted, no lights, no sounds

A good stomping ground for rural thugs or killers

Just then, a growling noise

I looked to my right

and saw two pairs of eyes

glowing red from the firelight

Then black masks, white snouts, pointy ears

A pair of large raccoons 

side by side, standing at attention

thirty feet away, staring at me

I felt my heart pounding

“Get out of here!” I screamed

“Get out of here!”

“Get out of here!”

So loud I even frightened myself

But the raccoons stood their ground

My wife said over the phone

“When raccoons growl they are rabid”

“Please get in the car, please lock the doors”

A third raccoon appeared

around the edge of the picnic table.

“Get away, get away!” I shouted

clenching my fists, nails digging into my palms

But he too stood unperturbed

knowing his raccoon family owned the campground 

I got up from my chair, retreated to my tent

pulled the zipper tight, tied it shut with a twist tie

I heard pots and pans clanging

A box of kitchen stuff crashed to the ground

And then eventually quiet

Later the beasts of the night

wandered in and out of my dreams

Home Haircuts: A Triolet

My hair, I’d say, looks a bit odd 

Though my wife reassures me it’s fine 

What if  her stylistics are flawed?

My hair, I’d say, looks a bit odd

She plows through my tangles roughshod

Pooh-poohs my complaints when I whine 

My hair, I’d say, looks a bit odd 

Though my wife reassures me it’s fine

If Only

If only it would stop raining all the time 

If only the honey bees weren’t in peril 

If only I could hear better at the movies 

If only Clifton would get a First Watch (Panera) 

If only they raised the minimum wage to $16

If only more of my shirts had pockets

If only the county fair had more rabbits 

If only Facebook would stop spreading hatred 

If only my line dancing class met more often

If only they found a cure for Parkinson’s

If only the years wouldn’t speed by so quickly 

If only postage stamps still cost a dime 

If only our sheepdogs came back to life

If only they’d get rid of the Electoral College 

If only Cincinnati’s air were purer

If only I was better at small talk

If only my wife would like to go camping 

If only the trolley ran to Clifton 

If only a million species didn’t face extinction

If only Elizabeth, Bernie, and Joe were two decades younger 

If only our phone company could get rid of scam calls

If only our family weren’t all far away

If only Netanyahu favored a two-state solution

If only they’d bring back Patti Page 

If only the doctor would renew my Ambien prescription 

If only ice cream was good for you 

If only I walked 10,000 steps every day

If only our arts center could find a new home 

If only the Enquirer actually covered the news 

If only the Bengals would win the Super Bowl 

If only my brothers were still alive 

If only Sherrod Brown had run for president 

If only our sink would stop getting clogged

If only I understood more about Zen Buddhism

If only I could run as fast as when I was 13

If only I could speak to my parents one more time 

If only the Easter Bunny turned out to be real 

If only…

Plaints of the Letter Z

Probably I shouldn’t fret

A true honor, being one of only twenty-six

But hardly an honor to be stuck at the end

We Z’s get short shrift

Webster’s dictionary has 953 pages

The Z’s begin on page 952

Does this strike you as just?  Logical?  

So disheartening for the grade schoolers named Zimmerman

whose daily activities are arranged alphabetically

They are fed up with being Z’s (as they well should be)

Zimmerman is the most common Z-name

but it’s not among the most popular twenty

Not even the top fifty

In fact it is number 379

Zhang comes in second at 472

In ancient times this was not the case

Practically everyone in the Old Testament is named Z

Zacharias, Zebedee, Zephaniah, Zelophehad

Zair, Zareah, Zedekiah, Zeeb, Zion

Zuzims, Zorobabel, Zophar, Ziza,  

and 131 more of our clan

Calligraphers admire Z as the most elegant

Like a bolt of lightning

Or the zig-zag trail of a mountaineer

scaling the face of El Capitan

Z is sharper than S, more fulsome than J

Twice as dynamic as our staid cousin N

And Zzz is among the most melodious of sounds

The gentle breathing of a sleeping newborn

Or the hiss of a snake-mother guarding her snakelets

Just ask yourself this question

Where would we be without zinnias, zebras, zithers,

zephyrs, zoologists, the zodiac, Renee Zellweger

Were it not for zygotes, the human race would be extinct

These are matters crying out for public discussion

Please try not to be zany when you next meet a Z

Whaam! by Roy Lichtenstein: An Ekphrastic Poem

Skipper and I were four when they bombed Pearl Harbor 

Our childhoods unfolded in the midst of the war 

In the back yard we fought in French trenches 

Battled the Nazis, attacked the Japanese 

Stormed the mock beaches as invading Marines

But nothing was more exciting than the Air Force

B-29s delivering their pay loads

Fighters taking off from aircraft carriers

And here, a P-51 Mustang destroying a Nazi fighter

It’s hard to imagine such courage

High in the sky, mortal clashes with enemy pilots

Google supplied these sobering facts

Twenty-three thousand American aircraft

Were lost in combat in World War II

Seventy-five thousand airmen died 

We owe these heroes eternal gratitude